by Jay Howard
Maman
Conception
The garden gate swings open on a protest of un-oiled hinges. Mme Bourgeois frowns, glares at the innocent metal.
Why did he not see to that when I told him? Pah! Must I do it all myself if it is to be right?
She walks slowly along the ancient paving stones which weave between massed ranks of herbaceous perennials, resplendent in their summer palette.
What should it be? So many options…
Her mind works through her sketch pads, her sculptures, those from decades ago as clear as yesterday’s.
A lifetime of work and so little time. Impossible! So much space…
She sinks onto a stone bench, her hooded eyes brooding, her mind churning through possibilities. The Tate’s commission for the old power station is challenging. She is excited by the thought of the sheer volume of the Turbine Hall. It will be a space that remains faithful to its industrial past, uncompromising, stark, yet full of light and air. She does not need her sketches now for I Do, I Undo and I Redo: she can already visualise them in situ, their steel towers and spiral staircases an echo of workmen’s feet, the huge mirrors altering perspective and the interaction with viewers, participants in her art.
But the bridge… the bridge needs… quelque chose de monumental… a masterpiece, the acme of all my striving…
She does not hear the drone of bees, or see the play of sunlight on dragonfly wings. Her focus is inward, searching, feeling her solution is only just out of reach, on the edge of her grasp, something she knows but cannot quite fathom.
What will be in proportion? Massif mais fragile…
A passing fragrance of roses brings her back to consciousness of her garden. A tiny movement near her hand catches her attention. A spider is busy, spinning its nursery web, thick matt grey strands between yellow-flowered cinquefoil twigs that will keep her spiderlings safe.
A breeze caresses Louise’s cheek, a kiss. Her eyes light up, she touches her cheek. The years spin away and she is a little girl once more, safe in her mother’s protection, her own strong, fearless, clever mother spider, weaving her tapestries, is by her side in the garden and the message is clear. She nods an acknowledgment. Her life’s work has all been leading to this time.
Oui, Maman, le moment est venu.
She strides off towards her studio. There is much work to be done.
Her assistant pauses, holding the prepared tray of coffee and croissants, watching the purposeful gait. She knows those eyes will not see her now, that Louise will not want the requested breakfast in the garden. There are months ahead in which all that will matter is the work, the creation, the sculpting of thought into reality.
Incubation
Alice returns to her desk looking thoughtful.
“How did the Q1 review go then?” Beth, her friend and colleague, asks. It is of great interest to her, since she is next on the list to face a quarterly review with their new team leader.
“OK, I guess... But he thinks I’m just coasting, both in work and personally.”
“That is so unfair!” Beth waves a hand towards the tower of paper on Alice’s desk. “You’re brilliant at just calmly coping when some arsehole dumps something like that on your desk. And he has no right to bring your personal life into it.”
Alice logs back in to her computer and says, over her shoulder, “I think he’s right. I haven’t really found anything challenging in any way for… I don’t know how long.”
Her eyes scan the latest emails. “He wasn’t saying I’m not performing well, just that I might benefit if I were to find a stretching objective. You know, career and personal development stuff.”
“If he pokes his nose into my personal life he’ll be in for a shock!”
Alice can’t help but snort in laughter. Beth’s personal life is enough to make most people blush.
Her attention is then taken with the latest online news items, one in particular: pictures from the Tate Modern, being visited by one of the minor royals. Alice looks at the picture, her attention not on the person but the sculpture in the background. She feels fear and revulsion shiver along her skin. From what she can see of it, it is the very essence of spider. Memories of close encounters with spiders flash through her mind. She feels the cold sweat on her face and is ashamed that such harmless creatures should do this to her.
Her team leader’s words sound loud in her head. “You’re a very intelligent, capable member of staff, Alice, and there’s no way I want to lose you from my team, but for your own good you need to get out of your rut. Define a goal. Think about what you have avoided as being out of your comfort zone. Set yourself a challenge, either work or personal, to tackle something new, something that needs a bit of grit and determination to accomplish.”
She stares at the spider sculpture, fascinated and revolted by it. It is so far out of her comfort zone it almost paralyses her.
So he wants me to be challenged does he? What greater challenge than this?
“Who’s that?” Beth asks.
“Not important,” Alice says, “this is what’s important.” She points towards the menacing, looming sculpture behind him, carefully not actually touching the image. “That, my friend, is where I’ll be on my day off, on my birthday. There’s my stretching objective – curing my phobia by facing it down.”
Having dropped the bombshell Alice swivels in her office chair away from the computer screen.
“You’re not serious?” Beth, says, her mouth a little ‘O’ of disbelief. “Are you?”
“You know I don’t say things I don’t mean,” Alice says, her voice calm while her heart is hammering.
“But… you’re terrified of spiders… you screamed blue murder when that one dropped from the ceiling onto your arm.”
“And your point is?”
“I was joking the other day when I said you should go.” Beth jabs at the monitor. “Look at it! I wasn’t joking about the size of the horrible thing. It’s enormous!”
Alice smiles. “Yes, that’s why it’s perfect for the task.”
Beth shivers theatrically and grips Alice’s shoulder. “Tell you what, if you want the thrill of fear we’ll go to Alton Towers or bungee jumping or something.”
“No, I want the spider.” Oh my god, what am I saying?
Beth sits down heavily, shaking her head. “I offer you a slap up meal with the girls, and a night dancing, maybe pick up someone hot, and you choose a spider instead?”
“Entry is free to Tate Modern so just think of all the money I’ve saved you. You can buy my tube ticket and a birthday ice cream instead.”
“Jeez, you’re one crazy woman. I’ll buy your ice cream when you get back. No way am I going anywhere near that monster.”
“No problem. I’ll go alone.” Alice saunters off to the coffee machine, hoping Beth doesn’t see how her legs are shaking.
Fruition
Alice had always promised herself a cruise along the Thames. She knows it is a terribly touristy thing to do, something that she’d never admit to her friends that she’d done, but it offered such a different view of her city. It was a promise she had fulfilled that morning.
And much good it did me, she thinks glumly, getting off at Bankside Pier and realising she’d hardly noticed any of the scenes gliding past, had not listened to their guide’s commentary.
Her fellow passengers are loud in their pleasure; the sun is hot, sparking glittering shards of light from the river. Her steps are slow. Large in her imagination is the spider, Maman, the sculpture that is lurking in the Turbine Hall, just the other side of the Tate’s doors.
A hand grips her upper arm.
“Hey, steady there, you OK?”
She nods, mute, her legs weak, barely aware of the burly American holding her upright.
“You look kinda pale,” he says. “I thought you were going to faint. Hey, can we have some of that water?” he asks a pavement artist. He accepts a fresh bottle, throws a few coins into the hat. “Thanks, buddy.” He o
ffers it to her. “Here, take a sip, it will help.”
She drinks deeply and with the back of her hand wipes away the drips running down her chin. “I’m fine now, thanks, it’s just the heat.”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I noticed you on the boat. Are you sure you don’t need a doctor?”
She stares at the entrance. “I’m fine now.” She turns to him, feels small against his size and latent strength. “Thank you, you’ve been very kind.”
“How about we go in together? Keep an eye on you - all part of the rescue package,” he says in a joking manner, hoping for her company now that he’s been gifted the opportunity to speak to her.
She wants to accept his protection but says, “No - I must do this alone.” As she says it she knows it is the truth. And she knows that she can do it.
He looks puzzled. “Huh?”
She looks up at him, her smile dazzling, and sweeps her long glossy hair back over one shoulder. “Your ex-First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, once said ‘You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.’ I’m about to do it.”
He is bemused but shrugs. “It’s a strange life, to come all this way and find a very lovely English rose, if I may say so, quoting an American.” He releases her arm, finds it hard to release her gaze. “Well, you have a nice day, ma’am.” He tips a finger to his brow. “And if you need me, just holler for Leo.”
He enters the building. She follows him.
It is cool inside the cavernous space. The entrance has taken her to a gallery. She has no opportunity to hang back in the doorway: there are too many people behind her trying to enter. Wide steps lead down into the hall but she’s not ready yet.
There are three installations on the Turbine Hall floor. Peripherally she has an impression of towers, mirrors, spiral stairways, but they are nothing to her: her attention is riveted on the bridge, on Maman. Her breath is rapid and shallow. Her skin tingles as fear is swamped by awe. She holds on to the railing, drinking in the sight. The connection is instantaneous and all the more powerful because it was not expected. The chemistry fizzes between them and she knows she will never be the same again.
Steel and marble have been rendered with love and passion into the essence of motherhood. The eight legs, balancing on sharp tippy-toes, raise the ridged body towards Alice, and there, in the ribbed mesh slung below her, are her marble eggs. She is smooth and sharp, fearsome in her protectiveness of her young, all-embracing, inclusive in her oneness with females everywhere. A group of children are running between the legs, playing tag, and they are Maman’s children too.
Alice feels her awe turn to joy. She hurries down the steps. She, too, wants to touch the legs, to stand within the shelter of the octet of protection, to be, just for a while, a child of Maman. She approaches with reverence, walks around and around it, each circuit gradually reeling her closer, the silk thread of recognition urging her, compelling her, towards physical contact.
She does not notice Leo climb the sweeping spiral of a tower’s steel stairway, take his bearings as he reaches the platform and sit to watch her for a while. The seat between the mirrors creaks slightly as he settles his bulk. Alice is absorbed in her circuits, her face reflecting her emotions.
She arrives within fingertip reach of a leg. The metal is cool to her touch. She strokes upwards, as high as she can reach. The legs appear to have a fluid form, flowing, yet the joints are knobbly. In places the shaping seems of muscle, almost human limbs, but mostly it is spider, it is art, and life, and wholly unique. Alice hugs the leg, strokes it, grips it tight with both hands to lean back and look up, up, her lustrous hair swinging away from her back. The sculpture towers above her and she can see the uneven spiral of the body, the gleam of the eggs within their mesh. And look – there are nippled bulges, breast-like, ultimate human symbol of nurturing.
The young schoolgirls have joined hands; they are weaving round and through as though the legs are the ribbons of a maypole. The last in the line holds her hand up to Alice as she passes, an invitation to join the thread. Alice laughs and grasps the retreating hand tightly, dances with the excited girls, weaving faster and faster until they go too fast and the line is broken. They stand there, getting their breath back, grinning in delight. Not a single adult has said ‘No’, ‘Be quiet’, ‘Behave’.
Alice mouths ‘thank you’ and gives a finger wave to the girls before turning away from Maman. She tells herself she wants to see what perspective the tower mirrors give to the exhibition while she gets her breath back. What she needs is to get her emotions in order once more.
At the top of the staircase she hesitates, suspended between the urge to retreat and the urge to accept the invitation in the eyes of the burly man sitting between the mirrors.
“In need of some more rescuing, ma’am?”
Art is Life, Life is Art
The early morning light is gentle, the shadows long and soft. Angling low through the extra depth of atmosphere, the rays tenderly bless the earth, a quiet promise of the day to come.
Alice swings idly, feet up in her two-seater hammock chair. She sees the webs surrounding her, attached between every suitable strut, and wants to touch their delicate perfection, but knows that to do so would destroy that which she admires. She remembers Maman, she remembers past fears, and exults in her world of light and peace and spiders.
A perfect orb web has been spun between the vertical A-frame bars. The web shivers in the light breeze, spinning multi-hued colours in its dance with the dawn. A drop of dew is suspended on the lattice. Photons that have travelled ninety three million miles are caught and refracted, creating a scintillating spectrum.
Just for me. All that way, just for me to enjoy a dawn rainbow.
A mosquito flies onto the web, is trapped by the sticky silk. It thrashes in a desperate bid for freedom, every movement entangling it further. Two multi-jointed legs, banded fawn and brown, appear at the edge of the web from within the dark, open-ended tube, sharp tippy-toes feeling the jangling threads. The spider runs down her trap and sinks fangs into her prey. The mosquito’s fight for life is lost.
Merci, Maman, Alice thinks, for everything. She wonders if she can be the fierce protector, the clever weaver of a safe life for the child growing within her, that Louise Bourgeois saw in her mother.
A shadow falls over her and she turns her head for his kiss, lifts her hand to take his morning gift of coffee. “I love this garden,” she says. “It’s where I get all my best ideas.”
“Moving to New York wasn’t all bad then?” Leo asks and playfully tips her nose with a thick forefinger.
“Paris to New York, London to New York – not so very different.”
“Huh?”
“Louise’s journey, and mine.”
“Ah, yes.”
“Today, I think, I am ready to start writing Web of Life.”
He raises her palm to his lips. “Just make sure you weave me into it, maman-to-be.”